Are We Safe Yet?
by Durriken
Summary: Claire and Leon struggle to the safe room. Will they make it...?


A/N: Badass Leon is the only Leon I care to write. Rookie Leon can suck a lemon until the sourness biggens his balls and he starts dropping corny one-liners while lovingly force-feeding grenades to Goliath-sized tyrants hellbent on rearranging his digestive track into the shape of a balloon animal.

_**Are We Safe Yet?**_

* * *

The growling, lurching mob behind them couldn't be ignored any longer, not unless they were ready to risk being grabbed and subsequently having a chunk torn from their necks, so when Leon suddenly skidded to halt and spun around with his pistol raised, Claire already knew what was happening and kept running, thankful that he gave her the courtesy of getting just beyond him before firing off a round.

The blast still punched holes in her eardrums, but she was used to it now after having her balance thrown off countless times during their trek through this zombie-infested madhouse of a police station. The painful ringing that set fire to everything between her ears was manageable, keeping control of her legs when they wobbled like jelly, though, that was the tough part.

Even though Leon was by the very definition a 'rookie cop' there was nothing amateurish about his skill with firearms. They were beyond impressive, which led to Claire entertaining the theory that Leon must have spent an obsessive amount of time at a firing range. More often than not, he was able to sink a slug into a zombie's cranium, which played a major role in their fight to stay alive since it seemed that betwixt death and reanimation, a human skull apparently grew ten times thicker, able to withstand three, sometimes four direct bullets before shattering.

"Which way, which, way, which way—" The anxiety was front and center in Claire's voice as she glanced back toward Leon—he had just put down a zombie after two rounds to the face—then front again.

The darkened hallway before them was suffocatingly constrained, barely enough room to stick out an arm, and the murky liquid they were stomping through was an amalgam of rotted flesh and other bodily fluids that did its best to upset her stomach with its noxious stench. The only source of light came from the moons rays glittering in through the windows, and the occasional flash of lightning, the last of which Claire could really do without—she was jumpy enough as it was—but it did provide her a few precious blinks of clarity. She had dropped her flashlight back in the Main Hall after dodging a punch that was undoubtedly meant to take her whole head off; it was thrown by this monstrously tall, spiral-faced gentleman wearing a trench-coat. They called him Mr. Holy Shit, Mr. Holy for short, based off the first thing they said in tandem when he burst through the wall of the press room a couple hours ago.

Two more shots peeled into the air, no less painful on the ears but they clearly met their intended targets given the thuds that followed.

Claire's head snapped left—_That's the safety deposit room_—then swiveled right—_And that's the door to the west office_, which she already knew to be locked—before she pushed out a troubled sigh. Advancing a few steps, she kept her gun lifted, arms tucked, with her finger wrapped so snugly around the trigger it might as well have been super-glued on as she fully intended to sink a bullet into any and everything that wasn't Leon.

"_Leon_!" she called, flattening herself up against the wall next to the safety deposit room, and in the back of her mind, she couldn't help but wonder why in the world she was whisper-shouting with the ear-bleeding sound of gunfire still splitting the silence. "Leon, it's this way, right? What does the map say again? Is it this hallway or—"

What caused Claire's breath to hitch and her heart to stutter wasn't just the sight of Leon surrounded by no less than five lurching zombies, but that he was soundly, and rather effectively, keeping their snapping maws from taking a bite out of him. Every one of their deadly swipes was deflected by his elbows, which were tucked in close, followed by a fast shoulder bump that knocked them back for a second of breathing room. _So that's why. _She was seeing firsthand why he told her to always keep her arms close to her body, for the soul purpose of quick reversals. It was the most deadliest dance Claire had ever seen, where even the slightest misstep on Leon's part meant a bite that there was no coming back from, but the look on his face… there was no fear, no hesitation, none of the usual emotions that accompanied a moment like this, only a storm of concentrated effort, a flawless rendition of moves honed through backbreaking practice.

With a quick thrust, Leon shoved his pistol through a wall of rotten teeth, knocking loose several that bounced over the ground. "Here's something for you to chew on," he said, and when the zombie continued to struggle, unaware or perhaps uncaring to the firearm prodding the back of its throat, Leon actually had the gall to smirk—then he pulled the trigger for a shot that was muffled somewhat but still splattered the wall behind the zombie in a chunky red paste.

A warning cry got lodged in Claire's throat when another zombie suddenly lurched up behind Leon, but it was met with a sharp elbow to the throat. Gagging and spitting, it still managed to swing out both arms but Leon ducked them like they were buzzsaws and kicked off backwards, smashing it against the adjacent wall with a grisly crunch.

"Tough bastard," Leon observed, almost with some respect. "Broken spine and still going, eh? Hm. Sounds like it's time for the 'red sprinkler' treatment."

"The red sprinkler…?" Claire blinked, digging deep into the reaches of her memory, then she nodded. _Yeah, he might as well, he's about in the position for it_, she thought.

The 'red sprinkler' was a move very aptly named because when Leon jammed his gun under a zombie's chin and pulled the trigger, it blew the top of their skull off in a violent shower of red. It was but one of many techniques that Leon had coined over the past few hours; specifically, it was a maneuver used to kill zombies, and in such a grandiose way that it basically demanded to be named. It truly baffled Claire how a 'rookie' cop could find time during all… _this_… the chaos and terror, to label the ways in which he put down zombies.

As she watched him fit his gun into place, effortlessly dodging the hands groping for his hair, Claire already knew the thought process behind Leon's move-naming, especially since it was something she herself had subconsciously picked up. With everything they knew now suddenly drenched in blood… with the groans of the dead clawing at them mentally and physically… when it all just seemed so damned hopeless to continue fighting, they needed something, _anything_, to help it all not seem so insurmountable.

There was no doubt in her mind that it was crazy, probably in violation of several moral codes, but it provided a distraction to keep their sanity in check—and that was good enough.

The total uses for the 'red sprinkler' was brought up to five when Leon pulled the trigger, causing an explosive spray of brain matter to paint the ceiling; cold droplets of crimson pelted everything below, it would have been somewhat artistic if it weren't so grisly. A moment later, Leon had dropped to the ground, swinging out his leg to trip the nearest zombie, then combat-rolled over it to launch himself back to his feet in a display of athleticism straight out of an action movie.

"I swear that never gets old," he said appreciatively, slinking his way up behind Claire, pistol primed. Even though she was staring directly at him, he gave her two 'all clear' taps on the shoulder. "I'm ready."

"Oh, I know you are," she agreed, offering a tiny smirk in the gloom that he returned. "You know you left two stragglers back there?"

"Gotta save bullets," he told her, flicking the butt of his handgun. "I'm sure you've noticed how scarce ammo is so I figure we only need to take down the ones directly in our way, or enough to clear a path."

It made sense then why, several times in the past, Leon had thrown out an arm to keep Claire from firing on every zombie they happened across, instead helping her to creep along the walls in avoidance, much like she was doing now. Supplies were a rarity and the few cases that they _had_ managed to find were nothing short of a blessing.

"There's no way you're just a rookie cop," she began under her breath. The last vestiges of gunfire were fading, leaving the entire hallway soaked in a silence that would have been deafening were it not for the groans of the zombies Leon had skipped. "You… do too much, Leon—you aim is comically good, your reflexes seem based on thought rather than muscle, and… you're just not a rookie," she finished with a shrug. "I don't buy it."

"Good thing I'm not trying to sell it to you, then," Leon replied easily, and even with her back to him, he could tell he had pulled a grin out of her. "Like I said before, this is my first day on the job, the very definition of rookie. But," he added slowly, glancing back more than once to make sure the zombies behind them were still a safe distance away, "I'm a quick learner. Tore up academy records all across the board. I'm a rookie, yeah, but I'm probably the best dang rookie the RPD has ever seen."

There was little reason for Claire to doubt Leon considering what she had seen, now and previously; it made perfect sense. "I asked earlier but, uh, you were having your little show… this is the right way, right?" she asked, inching closer to the corner.

Almost protectively, Leon copied Claire inch for inch, one hand at her back but not quite touching. "I don't know about right, but it's where Marvin pointed us to so…."

"That's… not very reassuring. I was hoping for reassuring."

"Yeah, you can go ahead and kill those hopes," Leon told her. "Reassurance died when the outbreak hit. All we have left now is gut-feeling and a pistol each. Besides, you've got me, rookie officer Leon Kennedy. What's there to worry about?"

Those words were far more comforting to her than Claire would ever admit, to know she wasn't alone in this mess. "I know, I know, but… I just don't wanna be wandering lost in this hellish—"

A clap of thunder set fire to the skies and a burst of lightning lit up the entire corridor, including the horribly thick visage of the trench-coat wearing Mr. Holy Shit.

In all but a heartbeat, Claire felt her stomach drop into a void with nauseating force—

"CLAIRE!"

—but when Leon took a fistful of Claire's shirt and snatched her backwards, she didn't stumble, waiting until the wide expanse of the tyrant's fist whooshed past, the force nearly enough to crush her nose, before she lifted her pistol—

"_Zero-One Popper._"

—and squeezed off a shot.

A pebble-sized burst of blood blew out from between Mr. Holy's eyes and he staggered back, his footfalls causing the ground to rumble and the walls to shudder.

"That's thrice for 'zero-one popper'!" Leon called out as he sprinted past Claire toward the stumbling tyrant. Gathering just enough speed, he leapt and dropkicked it square in the chest with enough force to slam it against the wall, dazed but predictably unhurt.

That didn't surprised either Claire nor Leon, who slammed a palm to the ground to keep from falling over. They had already survived enough run-ins with Mr. Holy to deem him verifiably indestructible, by their current means at least. The best they could do was find a way to stun it long enough to beat a path in the opposite direction.

It only took a blink before Leon was up and tearing down the corridor to the left with Claire at his side. They splashed through puddles of blood, silence be damned, with their ears trained intently for the thunderous sounds of Mr. Holy picking himself up—they only had a few seconds at best and as far as they could see through the semi-darkness, the hallway was surprisingly bereft of any undead to slow them down, except for one at the very end, banging incessantly on the window from the outside.

"Think he has something important to tell us about the zombie outbreak?" Leon wondered, sounding conversational.

"Nothing that we don't already know, I'd wager," Claire responded.

"Yeah, you're probably ri—"

A gut-wrenching snarl ripped through the rest of Leon's words and nothing but pure reflex caused Claire to drop low, copying Leon's move from earlier when she swung out a leg that knocked Leon's out from under him. He fell in slow-motion, and the shock that froze over his face morphed into understanding when he spotted the licker diving toward him from the ceiling. Instead of fighting the fall, Leon leaned into it, throwing his head back, and the licker soared cleanly overhead, the talons at the end of those bloody stumps only managing to sever a few blonde hairs.

With an unholy rumbling that could only mean the tyrant was up and ready for round two, time found the corridor and Leon hit the waterlogged floor while the licker crashed full force into a vending machine, taking it down in a screeching shower of sparks and glass.

"So now you're copying my moves, too, eh?" Leon noticed with some bemusement and he took the hand that Claire offered.

She scoffed, hurriedly trying to pull him up. "Later I'm gonna tell you all the ways you're wrong but right now I need you to—GUH!"

The licker came vaulting over Leon's shoulder, tongue lashing wildly, and impacted Claire so hard that they went crashing to the ground in a tangle of flailing limbs. "GET OFF ME!" was all she had time to get out before one of the licker's claws raked a bloody line down the curve of her neck, drawing out an agonized scream.

"CLAIRE HOLD O—"

Leon's entire world spun when the lickers' tongue shot back, wrapped itself around his ankle, and flipped him into the air. His gun flew from his hand; he didn't know which way was up or down until he smashed into the floor, his forehead cracking off the tiles.

For one blissful moment that might have lasted an eternity, as blood gushed from the split in his temple, Leon didn't know where he was or what he had been previously been doing—

"AAAAAAAH!"

—but then he heard Claire's scream and it all came crashing back. Adrenaline coursed through his tired muscles and he pushed off to the side just before a colossal fist came down right where his head had been a second before.

The most peculiar look overcame the tyrant's spiraled face, like it could not understand why Leon's skull wasn't in broken shatters under its fist, and in that split second, Leon cast an anxious glance around for Claire; she was still wrestling with the licker, and putting up a damn good fight for her life. It's slimy pink tongue was double-wrapped around her throat and determined to choke her to death but she had one hand frantically pulling at it, giving her seconds of air at a time to gulp down, while her other hand clutched its throat to keep those snapping fangs from taking a fatal bite out of her face. They flipped and thrashed and tumbled everywhere, bumping into the walls, knocking over potted plants; the rest of the lickers limbs were adamantly tearing her clothes to shreds, sometimes carving into her flesh when she wasn't able to pivot her body in time.

Leon opened his mouth to tell her he would be there in a minute but the moment he parted his lips, the tyrant's foot collided with his stomach and he folded around it, coughing up a spattering of blood. Agony bulged Leon's eyes, it blazed a trail through his veins to accompany the sickening snap that echoed from his insides. The urge to vomit was an almost unbearable one but he swallowed whatever had shot up his throat—

"LEON!"

Through the convulsions, he heard his name, and he saw when Claire's foot shot out, kicking her dropped pistol toward him. Gnashing his teeth, Leon snatched it up and flipped onto his side as the tyrant reared back for the finishing kick. "_That hurt_!" he roared, pulling the trigger, and the tyrant's left eyeball burst in its skull.

The kick that should have put a hole through Leon put a hole in the wall an inch or two above his head and he scrambled to get out from underneath the blinded tyrant, forcing his trembling body to cooperate. Consciousness was fading fast, blood continued to trickle over his bottom lip, so it was by the grace of God that when he threw out a hand, his fingers latched onto one of the licker's legs.

It was only a split-second, when the licker's tongue faltered in its attempt at crushing Claire's throat, but that was all she needed. Unleashing a scream of rage, Claire snatched her hand from its prehensile tongue and pulled a knife from the sheath at her hip; in a flash of silver, she sank it deep into the licker's exposed brain. Instantly, its body gave a surprised twitch then limply fell over her.

Chest heaving, Claire tossed the corpse to the side and scrambled over to Leon, keeping her bleary eyes trained on the kneeled tyrant as she helped her partner to his feet. "I thought… I thought we were dead for a second there," she gasped shakily and Leon nodded with a hiss of pain, throwing an arm around her shoulder.

"Me too," he rasped as they shambled as fast as they could toward the end of the hallway. "Quick thinking, Claire… w-with the gun…."

"Quick shooting, partner," she told him graciously, attempting to smile, but a spasm of pain around her hips almost caused her to trip and take them both down. She could feel a wetness gathering there, cold and sticky….Blood, it pulsed from a deep gash in her side, and every breath she heaved, every step she managed to take, it only served to bring her closer to passing out.

But she couldn't, not yet, and neither could Leon. She could see the trails of blood leaking over his bottom lip despite numerous attempts at wiping it away. That kick from the tyrant had done some serious damage, maybe only a few broken ribs if they were lucky….

"Th-this way," Leon grunted, and instead of heading for the staircase directly in front of them, he nodded towards the right, at the door in the alcove. The plaque next to it read 'Dark Room'. "Hopefully, we can"—a flash of pain short-circuited his ability to speak and he had to inhale through his teeth—"w-we can catch our breath there… shit…."

The sight of so much blood spilling out of her partner instilled a new level of panic within Claire that she didn't know could exist. "Leon, stop—just… just be quiet," she told him, clasping a hand to the wound at her side, and there were trace amounts of worry in her tone that brought out the most fatigued grin from the rookie officer.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa….Is the r-rough and tough Claire Redfield worried about… about little ol' _me_?" Leon chuckled, guiding her to the door. "The world _must_ be coming to an end…." When he gripped the doorknob and turned, it thankfully flew open revealing a room with a single table, on top of which sat an old fashioned typewriter, a couple chairs, some sort of storage box and most importantly, a beat up sofa. "C'mon, quick… b-before Mr. Holy Shit gets back up…."

When they had staggered inside and double-locked the door, Claire helped Leon over to the couch, gently setting him down before collapsing into the chair at the table, and for a few minutes, neither said anything. Every fiber of Claire's being was on fire, screaming for mercy, begging for release; tears burned and blurred her vision but she kept her jaw taut, refusing to let even one drop slide. Wincing, she lifted the hand she had pressed to her side and almost had a panic attack when she saw that her fingers were saturated in blood; it dripped and rolled down her wrist in streams.

And then it was all of a sudden too quiet.

"L-Leon…?"

No response came.

Blood was dripping off the hand Leon had dangling over the edge of the sofa while his other arm shielded his face from view.

"Leon," she called more forcefully, as forcefully as her cracking voice would allow, and more than the blistering agony sparking at her hip, a very hollow sense of loss was starting to sink her heart when silence met her ears.

He was oddly still on that sofa. She couldn't see his chest moving, couldn't hear him struggling to breathe like before.

"L-Leon," she sniffled, squeezing her hands into trembling fists on the table and willing him to move through burning gaze alone, "I… please, answer me, I don't… I can't do this b-by myself, it's… it's too much, please…."

She could tell the blood loss was starting to take hold as her head was beginning to throb and her heartbeat was quickening, though she couldn't be sure if that was because of blood loss or a refusal to accept that she was now alone.

The tears she fought to keep back were running free now, cutting a path through the grime on her cheeks.

"Leon, I sw-swear… if you don't… if you don't answer me right _now_, I'll… I swear, I'll…."

The rest of her threat got lost in a burst of sobs as Claire rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hands.

"Come on now," came a weakened voice that ignited Claire's heart, "you can't trip up at the finish line, Claire…."

The arm covering Leon's face fell away and those piercing blue eyes, so stubbornly full of life, fixed themselves on Claire with an accompanying smirk.

"You swear what?" he goaded her.

Relief flooded Claire's body so thoroughly that all she could do was collapse over the table with her head slamming down next to the typewriter.

"When I can feel my legs again, Leon… I'm gonna kill you," she muttered.

He chuckled hoarsely. "B-better you than Mr. Holy shit out there…."

* * *

A/N: **#yearoftheoneshot**


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